Creating a Bleeding Edge (GCC2/4 hybrid) Haiku CD from Ubuntu 9.10

You are an Ubuntu user who has heard about this new OS called Haiku, and would like to try it out. You also like to be in the bleeding edge, so you don't want to settle for an alpha 1 release that has started to show signs of age (it dates back to September of 2009). Nor do you want to use the Haiku nightly builds, as they are too barebone and lacking even in very basic applications. If that's your case, then creating a Haiku install CD from the development branch is well worth a try, and not that difficult. This is a simple how to that describes, step-by-step, how to build a Haiku GCC2/4 hybrid install CD from the development tree using Ubuntu 9.10.

The resulting installation CD will include the latest version of Haiku from the development tree, all the development tools, all the base preferences, demos and apps, plus several programs such as Vision (native IRC client), BezillaBrowser (Firefox-based browser), Clockwerk (native movie editor), Wonderbrush (native graphics editor) and others. The CD will also give you a GCC2/4 hybrid installation, so alongside legacy BeOS apps, you will also be able to play with some of the new exciting native apps that require GCC4 -- the new Webpositive browser comes to mind (nightly builds here) -- and try out the new ports that have recently made it to the Haiku camp, such as Qt apps, KDE programs, and the YoutTube-capable Gnash Flash player for Haiku (installation how to).

There are only five simple steps required to create your bleeding edge Haiku CD. Open a Terminal in Ubuntu and simply run the commands in each of the following steps from the command line as shown.

STEP 1. Installing the Required Software

You first need to install all the development tools required by Ubuntu to cross-compile Haiku. From a Terminal, type as follows:

sudo apt-get install subversion yasm autoconf automake texinfo flex bison gawk build-essential

STEP 2. Get the Haiku build tools

Next, run the following commands to download the Haiku build tools, which we will build in a later step:

svn checkout http://svn.haiku-os.org/haiku/buildtools/trunk haiku/buildtools

STEP 3. Get the Haiku Sources

Now run the following commands from Terminal in order to download all the Haiku sources to your computer:

svn checkout http://svn.haiku-os.org/haiku/haiku/trunk haiku/haiku

STEP 4. Configure the build tools

Use the following commands from Terminal to configure the build tools:

cd /path/haiku/haiku/
mkdir generated.x86gcc4
mkdir generated.x86gcc2hybrid
cd generated.x86gcc4
../configure --build-cross-tools-gcc4 x86 ../../buildtools/
cd ../generated.x86gcc2hybrid
../configure --build-cross-tools ../../buildtools/ --alternative-gcc-output-dir ../generated.x86gcc4/

STEP 5. Compile the Haiku sources

You are now ready to compile the Haiku sources to generate an ISO image that can be burned to a CD. Issue the following command from Terminal:

jam -q @alpha-cd

Once compiling is done, you will find a file named haiku-alpha.iso in your /develop/haiku/haiku/generated.x86gcc2hybrid folder. This is the ISO image file that you will use to create your Haiku installation CD.

All you have to do now to create your bleeding edge Haiku installation CD is burn this image to a blank disc (see Burning the Haiku CD) and proceed to install Haiku from the CD (see Installation Guide).